The by-election was caused by the death of Paul Goggins, who died on the 7th January 2014 after suffering a brain haemorrhage while out running in December 2013. The by-election was held on 13th February during the middle of the 2014 floods and resulted in Labour holding the seat with an increased majority. UKIP took second place and the Liberal Democrats lost their deposit.

Result

Mike Kane

(Labour)

13261

55.3% (+11.2%)

John Bickley

(UKIP)

4301

18.0% (+14.5)

Daniel Critchlow

(Conservative)

3479

14.5% (-11.0%)

Mary di Mauro

(Liberal Democrat)

1176

4.9% (-17.4%)

Nigel Woodcock

(Green)

748

3.1% (n/a)

Eddy O'Sullivan

(BNP)

708

3.0% (-0.9%)

Capt Chaplington-Smythe

(Loony)

288

1.2% (n/a)

MAJORITY

8960

37.4% (+18.8%)

Turnout

28.2% (-26.1%)

Candidates

Mike Kane (Labour) Former teacher. Former Manchester councillor

Mary Di Mauro (Liberal Democrat) Manchester councillor

Daniel Critchlow (Conservative) Born in Manchester. Educated at Bury Church of England High School. Church of England vicar

John Bickley (UKIP) Born 1953. Businessman

Nigel Woodcock (Green) Higher education lecturer

Edward O'Sullivan (BNP) Driving teacher and former army technician. Contested North West region 2009 European election, Salford mayoral election 2012

That’s it?
So, basically, they applaud the massive advances Manchester has made under the Labour Council and former Labour government (and present Coalition government, though I believe that is less obvious) and then add a remarkably unambitious couple of plans and call it a Manifesto for Manchester.

“Labour certainly appears up for the challenge. The party has sent shadow Cabinet ministers to the constituency – including party leader Ed Miliband last Friday – to meet voters and local media every day for the past 10 days.”

John Bickley, Ukip’s candidate, said he had been “stunned” by the number of former Labour voters who had told him that they were going to vote for him next week.

He said: “I have people walking up to me unsolicited and saying ‘I will vote for you’. These are people I would put a fair chunk of money on would never vote for anyone apart from Labour.

“There is a sense of betrayl. People are starting to see through the political class. If you look at the frontbench of the Labour party – most of them have never had a real job. Most of them are paper millionaires with fancy houses.”

———————-

I don’t know how long UKIP’s momentum will last for, but this sentiment is a serious issue which Labour top brass has to fundamentally address.

“The differences between London and the rest of the country now seem to be much larger than the differences between traditional Labour and Tory heartlands, and this gulf of worldview is growing to such an extent that London independence seems slightly less ridiculous an idea with every passing year.

That is, ultimately, what the Ukip revolt is about and what unites former voters of both major parties – a protest against the Great Wen.”

I don’t doubt the sentiment exists, but it should go without saying that the UKIP candidate will not be the best authority on how widespread it is. If every candidate who said they were ‘stunned’ by the number of people saying they’ll vote for them actually won, it’d be a very different Parliament right now. Probably dominated by the Lib Dems.

Well, from a Green perspective it is going okay and we have got one leaflet to everyone and a second to some). I think we will probably let someone else win this one 🙂 UKIP will do pretty well it feels – they may well run Labour very pretty close. Overall though little interest and low turnout to be expected

If Labour got over 50% of the vote in what I think will be a low turnout, I would be pleased. It seems to be a straight sway from Tory to UKIP and Lib Dem to Labour but, as the Ashcroft poll shows, there is the normal churn in there.
The Lib Dem swing to Labour is mirroring what is happening across Manchester in the local elections.
I am surprised the UKIP vote is so low, given the fact that they were prompted in this poll.

I do rather think my party would prefer a closer poll. Not too close mind – don’t want UKIP activists and UKIP voters/would-be voters getting the wind in their sails. But all a poll like that does is make some activists complacent, and if word gets round about it makes would-be Labour voters more complacent as well and less likely to actually come out and vote!

When a result is seen as a foregone conclusion, a party’s base is less likely to come out and vote if they think it’s in the bag. A fair few upsets have happened in history precisely because of that.

MrNameless – yes, I was due to be there tomorrow, but the torrential rain forecast all day means I’ll be there on Monday. A colleague was there today. His ‘feel’ was that it’s closer than the Ashcroft poll, but he only managed to speak to 40 voters. Immigration and fuel prices were the issues mentioned most often.

The most interesting thing from the Ashcroft poll is the section about how much campaigning people have noticed from the parties. Now I’m presuming that Lab/Con/LD/UKIP all took advantage of the freepost and that it will have reached probably 99% of households. Yet only 63% say that Labour (who have likely delivered a number of additional leaflets by hand) have delivered stuff. The Lib Dems were at 18% (they may only have sent out the freepost leaflet) so 1 leaflet is missed by 82% of the population.

On the doorstep/phone canvassing front which presumable people are more likely to accurately recall the numbers are also interesting with Labour leading UKIP 19-6 on the doorstep and 7-1 on the phone. So Labour likely know where their voters are a lot better than UKIP and probably had some idea before the election was called so this difference will be even wider.

Well the BNP vote has slumped everywhere else in the country, so I find it hard it hard to see why they’d hold up very well – particularly when UKIP are offering the same messages on traditionalism and immigration but with a more acceptable face.

Dry here today! I was underwhelmed by the huge Tory poster saying he’ll fix potholes. Maybe he thinks it’s a Council by-election? FS & Mrnameless – the BNP vote held up in Rotherham, but they were already strong there with a well known candidate. I haven’t seen any posters yet, other than at the Party HQs here.

This by-election, which although it came to be through tragic circumstances, represents a significant milestone in my UKPR commenting career, for I was at university with one of the candidates. I feel it’s a right of passage.

“predictive text turns *wellies* to willies!” puts me in mind of Not the Nine O’clock news

UKIP did a lot of damage to the once-respectable Conservative vote in Wythenshawe in recent local elections and will do so again here, and I think the Green candidate, Nigel, interviewed rather well.

And to Neil: yes, the BNP candidate in the Rotherham did outpoll the Conservatives-she came third and the Conservatives’ Simon Wilson came fifth (behind Respect)-the worst ever Conservative placing in any English by-election.

HH – I think the perception was that the Govt just didn’t care about Somerset after a month, unlike Prince Charles. Although, arguably the ridicule of a confused Govt is worse eg see Iain Martin’s piece in the Telegraph.

HH – I think the perception was that the Govt just didn’t care about Somerset after a month, unlike Prince Charles. Although, arguably the ridicule of a confused Govt response over the weekend is worse eg see Iain Martin’s piece in the Telegraph.

Win for the Greens on the cards here = London flooded tomorrow and everyone sees we have been scientifically correct on climate disaster while others blame end of pipe solutions. If only, not sure folks are up for facing reality just yet 🙁

Unfortunately for the Greens, support for them won’t really pick up until we’re really suffering the effects of climate change, but which time of course it will be too late for green policies to totally reverse the trend. Never underestimate humanity’s ability to not get worked up over a problem until it’s really bad.

Also to be fair the Green policy portfolio is really quite unrealistic in a number of flagship areas. Their problem is not just that people don’t share their assessment of the problems economically or environmentally – a lot of people who do share their assessment (probably including myself) don’t see them as putting forward serious and credible solutions a lot of the time. I mean, take academics as a category – very few of them indeed would dispute climate science and many would put it higher than most voters on their list of priorities, but generally very few of them vote Green.

That’s true. Whilst climate change is one of the issues I do get very worked up over, I never really considered joining the Greens. I wanted to support a party with abit of realism in it. Further to that, it’s also why I never really considered the Liberal Democrats – if nothing else, this coalition has dragged more of the party into reality, if I may be so blunt.

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